Hellinger's Law

Hellinger's Law
Directed by	Leo Penn
Produced by	Chas. Floyd Johnson
Screenplay by	Lawrence Vail; Jack Laird
Story by	Lawrence Vail; Ted Leighton
Starring	Telly Savalas; Morgan Stevens; Roy Poole; Ja'Net Dubois; Melinda Dillon;
Music by	John Cacavas
Cinematography	Charles Correll
Edited by	John J. Dumas; Leon Ortiz-Gil; Bill Parker
Production; company	Universal Television
Distributed by	CBS
Release date	March 10 1981
Running time	100 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Hellinger's Law is a 1981 TV movie starring Telly Savalas. It was the pilot for a proposed TV series starring Savalas which did not eventuate, but was screened as a stand-alone film.

It was directed by Leo Penn.

Cast

Telly Savalas as Nick Hellinger
Morgan Stevens as Andy Clay
Ja'Net Dubois as Dottie Singer
Roy Poole as Judge Carroll
Rod Taylor as Clint Tolliver
Melinda Dillon as Anne Gronouski
James Sutorius as Lon Braden
Tom McFadden as Detective Roy Donovan
Lisa Blake Richards as Cara Braden
Kyle Richards as Julie Braden
Arlen Dean Snyder as Da Fred Whedon
Thom Christopher as Bill Rossetti

Production

Filming was to have begun on 27 February 1980 but was pushed back reportedly to iron out script problems.[1]

"I know some people are thinking it's a pilot," said Savalas at the time. "I didn't think that way. I made a two-hour movie. But doing it as a series would be different. Kojak was easy because I was playing Telly for the most part. It was a role I could ad lib. Although I could play a credible lawyer, I know nothing about the law. I'd be more dependent on the scriptwriters." Savalas said if the series went ahead he would want to make the character come from New York rather than Philadelphia. "Telly's from New York, and if you do a series you want to make it comfortable for the actor. It'd have to be close to my roots so I wouldn't have to worry about my speech pattern."[2]

Novelization

In December 1980, approximately three months before the telefilm aired, Jove Books released a novelization of the teleplay. The legal-sounding by-line of its author, "Justin Barr," is probably a pseudonym, as it appears on no other published work, and novelization commissions tend to go toward writers with prior book credits. The cover features a still of Savalas and a price of $2.25.

gollark: I have no idea how to actually convince anyone.

gollark: I see.

gollark: It doesn't, though; it's not actually going to be divided up neatly along the longitude lines still, so you'll have to have big tables of exceptions, only somewhat different ones now.

gollark: zoneinfo databases are fairly large, if I remember right.

gollark: I'm not sure it fixes much though. You still have to keep giant timezone databases around, and extra transitional logic, on top of the new ones.

References

Telly Savalas' new show stalls Beck, Marilyn. Chicago Tribune 6 Mar 1980: a11.
Step at a time is Telly's law The Globe and Mail; Toronto, Ont. [Toronto, Ont] 6 Mar 1981: p.16.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.

[1] Telly Savalas' new show stalls Beck, Marilyn. Chicago Tribune 6 Mar 1980: a11.

[2] Step at a time is Telly's law The Globe and Mail; Toronto, Ont. [Toronto, Ont] 6 Mar 1981: p.16.